Kremlin attempts to suppress Armenian
USSR ruary 20, an event unprecedented in the relations among the nations in our country occurred. By a majority vote, the deputies of the Oblast Soviet of Nagorno-Karabakh adopted a resolution asking the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaidzhan and Armenian SSRs to transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast from Azerbaidzhan to Armenia and requesting the Supreme Soviet of the USSR consider the question."
It must have been the decision by a divided ("majority") vote that was "unprece-
MOSCOW'S RESPONSE to the demand of the Armenian people for the re-attachment of the Nagorno-Karabakh district to the Soviet Republic of Armenia was in fact announced by a long article in Pravda on March 21 before any governmental decision was made. This procedure managed to make a mockery at the same time of the so-called orderly democratic procedures of the Soviet state, of the independence of the
Soviet press and the new honest reporting that is supposed to be an essential part of glasnost and perestroika.
In the face of a ban on demonstrations and the deployment of police and military forces, the Armenian leaders called for a passive general strike, a "dead city," in Yerevan on March 26.
As we go to press, it is reported that the Soviet newspapers themselves have recognized that the capital of
Nagorno-Karabakh was shut down by a strike. There are also some reports that the protest was effective in Yerevan, although the Soviet authorities have tried to prevent any independent reports from coming out of the city.
GERRY FOLEY
MOTION and reason," was the title of the March 21 Pravda article. In the press of the
Stalinist bureaucracy, as in the press of all governments that are set
" and the interpeople represent "emotion, ests of the rulers, "reason." The original sin of the Armenian protests, the article made clear, was that they sought to mobilize masses of people behind a demand on the
"Indeed, a plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU] is to be held on the national question, where it will be considered in all its complexity and in a rounded way. In fact, that was announced already at the February plenum of the CC of the
CPSU, that is, many days before the events in Nagorno-Karabakh and around it.
"However, judging by everything, it seems that precisely this sober and businesslike approach was not to some people's liking. For true and consistent democratization, they are trying to substitute a democracy of mass meetings, a democracy of the streets, in which emotions and passions come to the fore."
Deplorably, these actions were really powerful. "On specific days in Armenia, up to 60 enterprises in Armenia did not function, and in the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous Oblast, work was in effect
The more than suspicious leadership of the protests even sought to oust officials opposed to the will of the people, something the authors were sure would have shocked participants in the protests themselves: "We were able to be present at a meeting of this committee [they call it the "Karabakh Committee where its action program was ratified. We think that if what had been said on that day in the Writers' Home, whose hall was obligingly put fully at the disposal of the Committee, had been said in [Yerevan's] Opera Square, the speakers would not have been interrupted by applause. For example, the demand was raised for dismissing and re-electing leaders of enterprises and party bodies, for recalling people's deputies and expelling them all from the party if they obstructed committees."
Even independent decisions by an official, supposedly representative, body was enough to shock the authors of the article. In fact, they began by saying that "On Febdented." There have in fact been territorial readjustments between various republics before, for example, between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The article did pay its respects to glasnost and perestroika by saying that, indeed, "the time is over when there can only be one opinion about any question." But in this case, it argued, the question was too delicate to be a subject for public dispute, which after all was an unreliable way of determining the truth. If there was an objective basis for settling such questions, it was around economic criteria.
### Spurious economic arguments
"When the territorial attachment of Nagorno-Karabakh was decided by the Communists of the Caucasian Bureau of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), they took into consideration above all in which republic the region could develop the fastest socially and economically, so that the lives of the people would be better."
"A thousand ties over the past decades have bound the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast to the Azerbaidzhani republic. Should this well-oiled mechanism be destroyed? This would have a negative effect not only on the social and economic situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaidzhan but in the entire country. And if, by analogy, other regions started to satisfy their own interests at the expense of other peoples, what would happen then to the union of brother peoples, to the economy of the country?"
At the same time, the article acknowledged that the "well-oiled mechanism" had not functioned all that well, and the people of Nagorno-Karabakh had real causes for complaint. Moscow would remedy these by special measures, such as pouring in extra
Pravda's economic argument seemed to be a good example of positions that could not stand much exposure to "democracy of mass meetings, democracy of the streets." Nagorno-Karabakh is a small area. How could its transfer to the Armenia SSR have a big effect on the Soviet economy as a whole? Furthermore, it is separated from the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic by only a small stretch of Azerbaidzhani territory
On the other hand, part of Azerbaidzhan April 4, 1988 • #138 International Viewpoint
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is separated from the rest of that republic by the Armenian SSR, the enclave of Nakhitchevan. According to Armenian protesters, Armenians, originally a large majority, have been reduced to a tiny minority of two per cent in this little Azerbaidzhan beyond
Leaders of the Armenian protests claim grant Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaidzhan was made personally by Stalin for the sake of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Mustapha Kemal's Turkey, as well as with the nationalist movements of the Muslim peoples in
What is there to convince the Armenians that the Soviet authorities would not sacrifice their interests for the sake of realpolitik? They are, after all, a small and isolated
There are only two national questions in the USSR that, by themselves, could really threaten the power of the bureaucracy. One of them is the Ukrainian question. The other is that of historically Muslim nations, of which the strongest and most developed is the Azerbaidzhani.
On the other hand, feelings of national solidarity, even in small nations, have proven to be very resistant even to the totalitarian steamroller. So far it has been only the national movements that have been able to mount mass opposition to the Soviet bureaucratic rulers.
### Vast and mysterious
"conspiracy" suggested
Pravda suggested that there was something sinister, some vast and mysterious conspiracy behind the organization of the Armenian protests. "The people coming onto the streets and squares of Yerevan, coming here from various parts of the republic, were well-organized, disciplined. A role was played by a long premeditated, carefully prepared organization to lead "popular agitations. ' In the enterprises, institutes, Vuzes [centers of higher education], ringleaders 'suddenly' appeared, who knew beforehand where and at what time to lead people and what slogans to chant. What is more, if anyone refused to go to the mass meetings, they were publicly shamed, virtually called traitors to the nation and forced to go to the meetings."
National solidarity at high points can be extremely powerful. The Soviet bureaucracy experienced this both in the occupation of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In 1968, it made a point of warning the Czechs and Slovaks about trusting in such slogans as "Ten million hearts beat as one, had been raised by the Hungarians resisting the bureaucratic counter-revolution imposed by Soviet troops in 1956. Ironically, this very article provoked another example.
The bureaucratic rulers tried to give it an "internationalist" facade by publishing it over the signatures of Pravda's Armenian correspondent, Yu. Arakelian; its AzerInternational Viewpoint #138 • April 4, 1988 baidzhani correspondent, Z. Kadymbekov; and a Russian "special correspondent," G. Ovcharenko. This unsubtle maneuver exploded in the Soviet authorities faces when the Armenian "signatory" publicly disavowed the article. It was an unheard-of act of courage by a Soviet journalist. It is difficult to imagine that he would have dared to do it if he had not felt the power of Armenian unity.
The article did not make any concrete accusations about who or what was behind the Armenian protests. It only hinted at obscure "organized" and "prepared" forces, without naming names or offering any evidence other than innuendo. It seemed to make an amalgam between Armenian nationalists and local officials opposed to Gorbachev's reforms or fearful of being exposed for their incompetence. It asserted,
"Nonetheless [despite the assignment of the area to Azerbaidzhan in 1923], the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh has arisen again more than once, as a rule in those moments when it was advantageous to one or another ruler of Armenia to distract the attention of the public from the mass of unsolved economic and social problems, from the improper style and methods of work of the party leadership." No concrete instances of this were given, although that would certainly be interesting, especially given the current re-examination of Soviet
At the same time, the article said that the Azerbaidzhani authorities had also asked for parts of Armenia, Georgia and Dagestan. But it was not stated whether these requests were also motivated by a desire to distract attention from their own unsolved and social problems." This school-masterly distribution of bad marks to the authorities of both republics was hardly the sort of thing to convince the Armenian protesters, who have accused the Soviet central authorities of manipulating the Azerbaidzhanis in order to counter the Armenian claims.
Apparently, the article was trying to hint that Armenian party authorities, who have been accused of opposing Gorbachev's reforms, had connived in the protests in order to save their own skins. The bureaucratic rulers of the subordinate nationalities have tended to be especially open to charges of corruption. But it seems hardly likely that the Armenian sub-bureaucrats were so daring or desperate as to try hide behind the mass mobilizations of a small people. According to the well-informed Soviet dissident, Sergei Grigoriants, they bypassed and dragged behind the mass
The article in a general way blamed the bad old days that Gorbachev has pledged to overcome: "Unfortunately, when the style and methods of the period of the cult of the personality were judged, the question of the further development of the Leninist traditions of nationalities policy was avoided. In the years of stagnation [presumably under Brezhnev], people tried to avoid approaching it from any standpoint. In this way, many diseases of society were driven inward, carefully hidden."
The way the Soviet authors of this article tied themselves in knots seems to be an index of the contradictions of Gorbachev's pretences and objectives. They blame the Stalinist past, but they use its methods. The national problems were hidden before, but the one that has blown up in their faces is too delicate for open discussion, too explosive to permit public involvement in deciding it. They prove themselves incapable of discussing it with the least openness or
Massive, all-pervading repression
Now, after some hesitations, the Soviet authorities have returned to their fundamental method of handling disagreements - high-priestly declarations coupled with massive, all-pervading repression. The hesitations were probably largely owing to the fact that the Armenians by themselves cannot pose a great danger to the power of the all-Union bureaucracy, as well as to the massive and united character of their
At first the price to be paid for repression, at a time when the Kremlin leadership claims to have turned over a new leaf, probably seemed to be out of proportion to the actual threat posed by the Armenian protests. Ultimately, however, the independent mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people, even in a tiny and isolated nation,
Ironically, the very article that denounced the Armenian protests in Stalinist style and prefigured the turn to repression proclaimed the ineffectiveness of traditional Stalinist methods of dealing with national dissent. It was an indication of the difficulty that the Kremlin will have now in intimidating the Armenian people and stamping out their protests.
Furthermore, the other national resentments that the article itself admitted had been driven underground and festered in the bad old days have been coming to the surface again, as in the Baltic states or even
The bureaucracy is in a weaker position to repress them, and it has proven in the Armenian case that it has no political arguments for dealing with them.
Arbitrary decisions and maneuvering by the all-Union authorities can only make such national problems more explosive. Sacrificing the national claims of the Armenians will not placate the peoples of Muslim culture. They have much more fundamental differences with Moscow than a small jurisdictional dispute here or there. The Kremlin leaders' total lack of a principled democratic approach to the national question is sowing their path with land-